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Mission accomplished. The Eagle has landed! So, I’m all good to go! Just can’t thank you enough guys! I know that for you seasoned repairers this is nothing special, but me, well, I feel like I’ve successfully taken off in a rocket! For those of you finding this thread in the future here’s some additional info that I learned on the way. After having removed screw A and B the spindle C just wouldn’t move pulling it by hand. So, I tapped on it ever so lightly horizontally in the direction towards spindle F and it moved in increments. To tap I used the plastic part of the hammer in the picture. I also needed to rotate the spindles C and F slightly. I did this by grabbing on to the thick part of the left spindle C (after having tapped it out a bit) with pliers with a bit of transparent and though plastic film (zip bag) in between the pliers and the spindle. To rotate the right spindle F I simply used a small BAHCO adjustable wrench. Loosening screw K as @nickelsilver and @rogart63 point out is indeed the way to get the scale back to normal! The inner sleeve can then slide as well as rotate without affecting the thimble (the barrel with the graduations 0-99). I’m really thrilled to own this beautiful precision tool! It gives me the same feeling that I get from looking at a really fine watch movement. So again, a really big thank you to all of you!

it looks to me that if you loosen the two screws A & B then move the micrometer away from the table, move shaft C, which is now loose to the middle of the table E. Tighten the two screws A & B You should the have the meeting point of the two shafts in the middle of the table and both point will be able to meet each other.

if i am correct you should be able to adjust the left pin or what to call it . By unscrewing the A and B screws . never mind the right pin isn't zero . That you can adjust later. The big screw on the ratchet is only for taking the click mechanism apart inside the handle . To adjust the zero on the scale loosen the big hex nut on the back of the scale . And turn the scale to zero . That way you will get clearance for the table.

You will not like this. My master who taught me , when we wanted to let off steam would gather the Timex watches that customers dumped on us and smash them up with our small watchmakers hammers. Then out to the rubbish bin.

Hi there JerseyMo I think we are approaching timepiece snobbery, Just because you pay £5 for a new watch doesn't make it any less than £5,000. The difference is when you flash your watch some one will ask is that a Rolex, where as if you did the same no one would bother to ask is that a Timex. They were designed for a purpose to enable the working classes to own and wear a watch, and this they did very well. The proof of the matter is that all these years later they are still being worn, repaired and collected, which bears testimony to the design and build of a watch of that price bracket. The fact that you can if prepared to look get hold of most if not all of the timex service data. Ok they were not billed as the must wear watch at Saint Tropez or the Cannes film festival but they did what they were made to do, and long may they be collected repaired and worn.

THis video on youtube has many mistakes. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6_o05HKFeE and here is my reply to him - You made three major mistakes in yoour facts. 1) the Marlin was not introduced in the 1960's , rather it was introduced in the 1950's. 2) there are more screws on the dial side to allow the movmentment to be taken apart. Did you try to take the dial off? 3) Timex watches very much can be repaired. Well there are more points to be made as to why Timex watches are popular with collectors. Need more information? just aks JerseyMo and I'll be happy to explain.

even the junk can be useful as parts donor. So don't always look past them. I would suggest to stay away from the day\date electrics until you get more familar with the electric series. after 2 or 300 of them you will be a pro!

I have used lizard straps or lizard grained straps and they look great. I should have the crown stem for it if your interested.

Put the screw/nut back on, you don't need to move the thimble (the barrel with the graduations 0-99). For future reference, it's held in place with that screw/nut, but is fitted on a taper and needs some coaxing to get off and move around. If you loosen screw K you can move the inner sleeve, it will just slide around. Get it where you want it and tighten K and you're done.

You can definitely move the fixed anvil toward the mic head (to the right). Just enough that you clear the table. On one of mine there is only maybe 0.10mm clearance, but that's fine. Once you've done that show us what it's doing on the scale and we can advise. The collar H is to tighten a collet that takes up the play on the spindle. You won't need to touch that.

Maybe not 100% . The K can be used to align the zero to the scale to zero . It no harm in trying . As long as you arne't loosening tha screws to much. Look at a normal micrometer . They work the same way .

I believe after he moves C, he'll have to adjust H,L and K to re-establish his zero point, which is C and F touching face to face. EDIT: @rogart63 has it correct!

For some reason that reminded me of the Vogons in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. "Meanwhile, the natural forces on the planet Vogsphere had been working overtime to make up for their earlier blunder. They brought forth scintillating jeweled scuttling crabs, which the Vogons ate, smashing their shells with iron mallets; tall aspiring trees with breathtaking slenderness and color which the Vogons cut down and burned the crab meat with; elegant gazelle-like creatures with silken coats and dewy eyes which the Vogons would catch and sit on. They were no use as transport because their backs would snap instantly, but the Vogons sat on them anyway. " My scintillating non-jeweled black dialed Marlin is still scuttling away nicely, but I'm keeping it away from the screen in case you reach out and give it a whack with your Timex detecting iron mallet.

Actually its in my watch room

Incoming... bought off ebay with issues. Will post an update when I get it done. Anilv

I just purchased my first Swatch branded watch in over 30 years. It's a very sleek, vintage Irony Chronograph. I saw one online over a year ago and finally found one at a price I was happy to pay. On a side note, I got to see the world's largest Swatch watch at the 1986 World's Fair in Vancouver BC.

@AndyHull, I like the 3 separate Bridges on the gear train. Reminds me of my Hampden. The engravings are very eye catching. The script under the 15 years part looks possibly Arabic... Where did this come from?

Hi I think there are more being worn out there than we think but how many of you would admit to that ? not enough street cred in a Timex. Me if it works and you like it wear it I have several including a micky mouse one and keep them for postertity. My daily watch cost me a tenner and is a good runner and quartz. At my age Iam past street cred. It looks reasonable keeps good time and glows in the dark what more do you need. Long live common sense.

I tend to shy away from pocket watches, but for some strange reason, this one appealed. As a result, I am another couple of quid closer to the poor house. Suspicious lack of hairspring, and no hands, but If nothing else it will make a great ornament... who am I kidding its going to get fixed if I can cobble together the bits. There does appear to be a fairly obvious dirt issue too, but I'll wait to see what shows up in the post and let you all know. Can anyone tell me what the non Latin script inscription says?

It is solid to the wall so no movement was possible. He suspects his cleaner had got a bit over zealous opened the door and the cleaning cloth got tangled. The vid was after my adjustments.The customer has been using a pro clock repairer for many years who has now retired. Also he has a lot of clocks that need attention so plenty of work afoot when I have time.

Today's "Watch of Today" - posted here, because.. Poking out from between my gloved hand and my fleece sleeve, about to venture out in to the wintry wilds of Scotland for the day. A fully serviced, fully functional piece of finest Dundee technology. A 1973 Timex Viscount Automatic day date (46850-3373).

Hearsay and misinformation is why I replied to that video. If you are going to present yourself as someone with knowledge or a level of expertise you better have your facts straight. Well that is unless you are running for political office. Peace and happiness!

Fair enough. But that is a perfectly sensible business decision. You could presumably better use your time, and make more money servicing a clock or Swiss movement, since Timex Dundee offered a repair service that meant it made more sense to you and your business model to send it away. However other people at the time could and did service them locally. If you were an authorised Timex service agent back in the day, then that was a part of your business model. The poster of the YT video erroneously stated that they could not be serviced. @JerseyMo and I corrected him on this point, and detailed how this could be done relatively easily by anyone why simply followed the process and the documentation available from Timex at the time, and still available on line to this day. This too is a fair point. You have no jewels to replace, and attempting to re-bush a pin lever Timex would be more trouble than it was worth financially, however worn pivot holes are relatively uncommon, compared with poor performance caused simply by dirt and neglect. Most of the old Timexes I have looked at fall in to the latter category and work acceptably (within the original spec), once cleaned and lubed.

It has been a bit of a busy couple of weeks recently, but I have managed to find a little spare time to fix a few things. A couple of other watches distracted me from the USSR's finest mechanical marvels in the previous post. Here are four recent 404 faces to keep you amused while you wait for me to get back to the Secondas. Most of the repairs were minor. The Timex requiring nothing more than a full service. The Orion on the other hand, is a jigsaw of left over BFG 866 parts salvaged from my junk pile. It runs surprisingly well considering its somewhat random origins. Not quite COSC, but certainly within the +/- 15 seconds per day range. Currently, fully wound it is sitting within about 4 second of keeping pace with the Pulsar kinetic that also distracted be from the Russian junk pile. Whether it will keep up this sterling performance remains to be seen, but I'm pretty confident it will.

Looks like a Venus 150 or 175 movement. Good chronograph.

ARSA is the watch company founded by Auguste Reymond (AR). SA stands for societe anonyme which just means limited company - hence ARSA. Later ARSA joined the Ebauches SA group of companies. If you go to mikrolisk.de and type in Memo you'll see that Memo Gold and Memo Stop were trade marks of Ebauches SA. It's therefore not unreasonable to imagine a situation where an ARSA marked movement was placed in a Memo branded watch. Long story short - Memo is likely just a marketing / brand name used within Ebauches SA of which ARSA was a part. And coming up with a new brand name was not uncommon especially when trying to sell in a new overseas market. You can probably imagine otherwise all the ARSA related jokes...

The pile of Slava automatic parts arrived, and I had a quick rummage through them last night. I started with that green pile of snot on the right, and after a lot of cleaning and a small amount of brute force, I extracted the mechanism from the case. It was held in by a stem that was rusted solidly in place. Once extracted, it got torn down. I discarded the dial into my scrap pile for the time being, it is a complete mess. I then cleaned and partially re-assembled the mechanism, to the point where it is all ticking away nicely, but still dialless. The only part other than the dial and stem that needed replacing was the day disk, but there were a couple of clean examples in with the rest of the spares. It is now running on the bench, as is the mechanism with the red hands next to the cardboard box in the picture above. That case needed a 322 crystal (which I had) and a stem (which I do not have). So, I'll need to source couple of stems, and do a little more work, and I should have two complete working dual barreled automatics. With a little more part swapping, I may even be able to get one or perhaps at a pinch two more going, using the remaining stuff and parts from another donor in my spares pile, but I may be short of some keyless work bits. I'll keep you all posted with my progress. I did some damage though. While attempting to remove the dial, I had the "green gunker" movement in a movement holder and it kept popping out. I then grabbed it between my thumb and forefinger to get a better grip. Thinking to myself "I had better be really careful here, or I'll stab myself in the thumb with this screwdriver", I then proceeded to stab myself violently in the thumb with the screwdriver. Much profanity and not a little blood later I passed my wife with my thumb in my mouth. "What are you doing" I was asked. I refrained from replying "Nothing dear, just bleeding to death", as I headed off to grab the Dettol and the Elastoplast. So today I have a throbbing left thumb with an interesting blue tattoo mark. Sometimes I wonder if this game is too dangerous and perhaps I should take up something safer. Base jumping perhaps.

In a way Timex had it right. They were doing Swatch style "repair" long before Swatch was a thing. Economically, if it took any significant time to repair, and the cost of replacement was less than the cost of employing some nimble fingered Dundee lass for that length of time to repair it, then bin it and give them a new one. The trouble is that repair depends on more than one factor. Pure economics has a tendency to make most modern "things" beyond economical repair, even if that repair is relatively simple, but sentiment often trumps economics. People collect and repair Trabants and Volkswagen beetles. People collect and repair Porches and Ferraris. The Trabant is "bad", and the Ferrari "good", if you are only judging on monetary value, but the Trabant is arguably just as interesting as the Ferrari from an engineering or historical perspective, and arguably more reliable and cost effective (though both fail miserably on their pollution credentials) . I happen to have more attachment to the history behind Dundee Timexes than for example Rolex or Omega, having worn Timexes in my youth, having passed their factory many times and so forth. So despite their utilitarian engineering (or perhaps in some small way because of it), and despite the poor management decisions that led to the demise of the Dundee factory, I find them interesting. I am not typical of your average high end watch purchaser of course, since although I could afford a Rolex or an Omega, I would probably not get as much enjoyment out of it as I would from restoring a battered old piece of horological history, with some interesting engineering quirk or some unique construction technique.

Very good, you have demonstrated again how prejudice and snobism can be crumbled with application and positive thinking. Like any other object nice watches can come and go, but your skills will stay with you forever.